Hasta Luego!

Tomorrow I leave Spain for a couple days in London and then on to Ireland. If anyone has things in London they absolutely love, let me know because I´m feeling a bit uninspired about touristing there right now.

Today I went to the Syphony in Bilbao. It was an excellent symphony, and quite different from what I am accustomed to. The major difference was that there were NO violins on the stage. They seem to have replaced what would be the violin section in America with clarinets, which there were 13 of, plus some bass (tenor?, anyway bigger) clarinets, at least two of them. There were two cellos, but no string bases. Maybe I´ve never gotten over my childhood exposture at montesorri school to Suzuki violin classes, (which seem to consist of a tremendous number of very small children torturing violins) because I was quite pleased with the absence of violins, and I´ve never understood why there need to be so many of them anyway. I don´t know if it was just the pieces they were playing today, or if they always have fewer violins, but I liked it. They had 7 percussionists - one of whom was a soloist on the first 2 pieces who was in town for this concert. There were 3 tenor and 3 alto saxes, 2 bassons, and 2 base basoons. 2 small and 4 large tubas (?) four trombones, 5 trumpets and 3 french horns rounded out the brass section nicely. The music they played was relatively energetic, one might even say jaunty, and other than the longish introductions in both spanish and basque, I thoroughly enjoyed it. At the end of the percussion solos, the conductor brought out a basque beret for the soloist and put it on him. The theater was a sea of red velvet and white and gold paint, almost over the top. I wish I could post a picture of it, but this computer is so old I´m just happy I´m not having to pedal something to use it, so needless to say there is no USB. But I did take a picture at the end, so if people want to see a really fancy theater it´ll be available eventually.

After the symphony, I rode the funicular up to a lookout spot with lovely views of the city and surrounding mountains, which are quite impressive, athough you can´t really see them from most parts of the town because of the hills. I think if I lived in Bilbao I´d want to live on top of a hill so I could see the mountains.

Yesterday I went to San Sebastian / Donostia which is a famous beach town. It finally stopped raining, so I am glad I waited to go. The beach is considered one of the best public beaches in the world because it is seashell shaped and protected from the open sea by hills on either end of the horseshoe plus an island in the middle of the opening. It was quite scenic and looked like a nice beach, although it wasn´t warm enough for me to test it out. I did see people surfing and parasailing in wetsuits on the other side of the town where the waves are bigger. Although I would love to learn to surf, I´m too much of a wuss to do it somewhere I need a wetsuit to get in the water. So I walked all the way around the beach and rode the funicular to the top of the large hill on the western end, which has great views of the beach, the town, the mountains behind it which are beautiful, the coastline of the Bay of Biscay extending east and west, and of course the bay itself. I didn´t buy a basque beret in the old town because I already have a black beret, and I don´t think I´d use a red one, but it was a hard decision. On my return home last night I visited the grocery store at El Corte Ingles (the large department store in Spain) and bought some packaged arroz con leche, (rice pudding) some olive tapenade, and half a bottle of Rioja wine, all of which I enjoyed thoroughly for a picnic dinner in my hotel room. I plan to do something similar tonight when I´m done at the internet cafe. So it´s be a good last few days in Spain, and I´m looking forward to having a home of sorts for a few weeks in Ireland before I return to MN, I think I would be grumpy if I had a lot more hotel hopping on the horizon with my ton of luggage.